Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says • Hacker News Board

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#181

Post by tptacek » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:44 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #176

tptacek wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what happened here. Read the DOJ's filing. * The accused admitted to knowing the password and refused to provide it, on the auspices of not wanting investigators snooping through his files. Only later did they claim to have "forgotten" it. * Prosecutors entered into evidence multiple factual claims establishing that the accused knew the password; for instance: years of eyewitness testimony demonstrating th…

> That's not what happened here. No, but that's what can happen if providing a password becomes mandatory.

Huh? Providing a password was made mandatory here, and, as I pointed out, the state's case is based on evidence establishing that the accused knows the password and is simply being intransigent. The state was not able to, on a whim, suggest the accused had a password they didn't actually have.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#182

Post by coldtea » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #179

coldtea wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But most of criminal law turns in large part --- mens rea --- over a court making decisions about what's in the head of the accused! That doesn't stop all these uncertainties affecting the outcome ("and the prosecution would like to note that the accused didn't provide the password, pretending that he doesn't remember it/know it" can turn jurors against someone, even if its BS). How many people were accused and con…

Of course uncertainty affects the outcome. Of course the system makes the wrong decision on occasion. It's a human institution.

Yes, but it has grown a little too inhuman in practice in a country that's 5% of the world's population but has 25% of the world's inmates.

(Plus practices like the death penalty, private prisons, abuse of solitary confinement for long periods, down to contractors overcharging 10x for prison phone calls. One would compare that with the 3rd world, not the modern Western world).

If anything it needs more limitations to prosecution and uncertainties that work in favor of the state, not less.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#183

Post by tptacek » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #182

tptacek wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course uncertainty affects the outcome. Of course the system makes the wrong decision on occasion. It's a human institution.

Yes, but it has grown a little too inhuman in practice in a country that's 5% of the world's population but has 25% of the world's inmates. (Plus practices like the death penalty, private prisons, abuse of solitary confinement for long periods, down to contractors overcharging 10x for prison phone calls. One would compare that with the 3rd world, not the modern Western world). If anything it needs more limitations to…

I agree that sentences in the US are across the board too long but am not sure what that has to do with compelled decryption of hard drives.

The court system didn't make sentences too long. They were dragged there, kicking and screaming, by a polity that overwhelmingly demanded tough-on-crime statutes and tough-on-crime prosecutors, and passed laws to ensure that the courts complied.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#184

Post by coldtea » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #181

coldtea wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not what happened here. No, but that's what can happen if providing a password becomes mandatory.

Huh? Providing a password was made mandatory here, and, as I pointed out, the state's case is based on evidence establishing that the accused knows the password and is simply being intransigent. The state was not able to, on a whim, suggest the accused had a password they didn't actually have.

In this case. In the general case, like it happens in the UK already, they can end up just demanding a password.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#185

Post by tptacek » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

mordocai wrote: post #154

tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no foolproof way, but uncertainty is something the law has dealt with for centuries, and isn't unique to this situation. The short answer is: it gets argued in court like everything else. If cryptography introduces too many new cases of contempt, we'll need to rework the contempt system, and, in particular, introduce juries to the process (perhaps for contempt sentences exceeding a certain number of weeks).

He isn't getting the chance to argue it in court, from what i've seen.

Have you read the filings? It sure seems like he has.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#186

Post by belorn » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:51 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #149

tremon wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he should be sentenced on the other evidence anyway. The failure to provide additional incriminating evidence could be used as an aggravating circumstance in the ruling, not as a separate crime with infinite detainment. (edit: replaced punishment with detainment, it's probably more neutral)

Why? He's in possession of data deemed contraband, but apparently not linked to distribution. The police need to demonstrate possession and can do so when their search is complete. The police did an investigation, obtained a warrant to search for the contraband and seized the hard drive. The defendant was ordered by the judge to decrypt the drive per the warrant, and refused to follow the order. He's in contempt of c…

Should this work in the same way when other "data" is in the possession of the accused? Say, a murder suspect is considered by the judge as knowing the location of the victims body, and by refusing to tell the court, the suspect is detained as being in contempt of court.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#187

Post by htns » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #63

This certainly points towards having more widespread support for plausible deniability, no? Are there any mass encryption tools that are reasonably simple to set up providing this (besides TrueCrypt Hidden Volumes)? Would someone continue to be held in contempt if they furnished a decrypted drive that didn't contain the information that court held as a "foregone conclusion" that it contained?

Tails combined with any encrypted cloud hosting service accepting anonymous payments (e.g. mega.nz, though I'm sure there are ones with better desktop integration) would offer more deniability than any local solution could, though it's debatable if paying is reasonably simple.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#188

Post by cwyers » Tue, May 17, 2016, 6:00 PM UTC

hiq wrote: post #81

probably_wrong wrote: post #71

I agree with the overall idea that this is an interesting/problematic case, but I think the discussion would be better served if we stopped assuming that the authorities here are morons. No, forgetting your password is not a lifetime sentence. No, not knowing the password for an item you've never seen is not a lifetime sentence either. Refusing to obey a judge's order, however, will get you in trouble. Again, these p…

The reasons are stated in the article (the suspect never mistyped his password, and always remembered it), and addressed by the commentators you criticize (under pressure and after seven months without typing it, it is not impossible that you forget a possibly complicated password). Even if you think that chances are high that the guy both is guilty of some crime and remembers the password, that still leaves the "wha…

He was in jail for seven months for the contempt charge under discussion -- it's not like he didn't know that's what they wanted from him when he went in.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#189

Post by elcct » Tue, May 17, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

virmundi wrote: post #45

The best part of this whole story is the unintended consequence of attack. Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops. Say you saw him looking at what could be kiddie porn. The guy doesn't know the password. Life in prison. No excuse. This applies not merely to Bob in Accounting that's a dick, but to everyone: Congress! Start sniping political enemies. A jump drive here.…

> Don't like someone, encrypt a zip drive with drivel, toss it in his car and call the cops.

So data has become new drugs ;)

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#190

Post by userulluipeste » Tue, May 17, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #39

INTPenis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Investigators say they know child porn is on the drives. His sister saw some of it and the suspect is said to have shown his family an illicit video, too. So that's their basis for this "foregone conclusion" apparently. That at one point in time it was witnessed. That is very dangerous logic. The sadest thing in this is that it took child pornography to make the headlines, not political activism or journalism but th…

A witness and some traces of keywords used on the suspect computer. I would not be too surprised if that was enough for a conviction, but the question remains on why the decryption should be necessary if the judge is already convinced beyond doubt that the accused is guilty. Its not like the courts put convicted murderers under contempt orders for failing to say where the body is buried.

"Its not like the courts put convicted murderers under contempt orders for failing to say where the body is buried."

I (can only) presume that this is not something easily comparable to a murder. This is more like catching someone with illicit drugs, where the possessed quantity can be essential to establishing the due penalty.